TEAM DEVELOPMENT

Overview

C Global consultants have facilitated workshops on team performance for a number of organizations including United Nations, Citibank, IBM, AstraZeneca, Shire, FilmAid, and Synergos. We support teams in clarifying their unique purpose, framing a compelling vision, conducting a stakeholder analysis, setting clear goals, defining roles & responsibilities, setting group norms, and managing conflict. Drawing from a range of team performance models and high impact tools, we create customized cases and encourage participants to identify their own scenarios to explore during the sessions.

TEAM

Development Process

In this section we describe the specific process we use to create tailored teambuilding programs. This process is illustrated by the 6-box figure below. It begins with the initial contact between the team lead and the C Global consultant. All of our tailored team programs include a combination of learning elements, leverage data and leading edge assessment tools, and real time exploration of team dynamics.

Team Development Process

1

MEETING & INTRO

2

DATA COLLECTION
& ASSESSMENT

3

DESIGN

4

FACILITATION OF THE PROGRAM

5

LEADER FOLLOW-UP

6

TEAM FOLLOW UP
(3-6 months)

Phase I

Meeting and Intro with the Team Leader

It is essential that the leader be actively involved in the preparation and implementation of any team building program. Our model of team learning emphasizes developing effective leadership and followership within the team and therefore begins with establishing a strong and supportive working alliance with the leader. Our goal for this Phase is to learn as much as we can about the leader’s specific concerns for his / her team and about his / her hopes for the future. We will also discuss with the leader options for data collection and design.

Outcomes
1. Learn the Leader’s analysis (strengths, challenges and hopes for the future) of his / her team.
2. Build a strong working alliance with the leader.
3. Share potential data collection and design options.

Phase II

Data Collection and Assessment

An essential part of any team intervention involves the strategic use of data to help the team examine its own strengths, challenges and hopes for the future. The use of team data represents a highly effective way to generate energy for growth and change. We plan to collect data about each team in advance of the program through interviews (either in-person or by phone) and an online survey. The combination of well-organized qualitative and quantitative information about the team will set the stage for each team to address its specific challenges in the workshop. This grounding in the team’s current reality and hopes for the future will serve as a key driver for success. In addition, we may utilize an assessment tool at this phase to explore aspects of diversity, conflict or team dynamics in the session. Descriptions of our most commonly used assessment tools are provided in a separate section below.

Outcomes
1. Gather information about the team’s current state.
2. Generate energy for the program.
3. Create a template for the team to conduct their own analysis of the data.

Phase III

Design

Based upon the data collected and dialogue with the team leader, a tailored design is created to support the learning and growth of the team in their specific organizational context. The program will be highly interactive leveraging the knowledge / insights of the group. We make use of a diverse range of methodologies including the following:

The design process will be used to engage in dialogue with the leader and to prepare the team leader to support and even facilitate parts of the program.

Outcomes
1. Develop a shared design for the team addressing the major themes.
2. Create a mix of engaging learning and action planning modalities.
3. Prepare the leader for the session.

Phase IV

Facilitation of the Program (online, in-person, or blended learning approaches)

During the session through a combination of online and in-person (if possible) modalities, the team will learn relevant aspects of team effectiveness and apply those insights to their own work together. The overarching goal is to leverage leading edge insights into teamwork to support the work of the group in their specific organizational context. As part of the session we often develop core team building bocks like long–term goals, stakeholder analysis, purpose statement, roles and responsibilities, norms, team processes, and external communication strategies. Lastly, the team will reflect on and engage in high impact action planning using the data collected in advance of the session.

Outcomes
1. Greater cohesion in the team and enhanced potential to leverage diversity and manage conflict.
2. Concrete progress on any needed team building blocks as described above along with detailed action plans for the future.
3. Renewed sense of focus, purpose, and engagement for the team and the team leader.

Phase V

Leader Follow-Up

After the session we summarize the main outputs in a brief report and have a meeting to support the leader around implementation of the action plans. This is the opportunity to assess the initial impact of the session and to gauge additional needs that may exist to move the team forward.

Phase VI

Team Follow-Up

We recommend when possible that the teams come back together in 3-6 months for a follow-up session either online or in person to reflect on progress made since the initial program. These sessions can include report outs on action plans, presentation of new learning content, and dialogue about new survey data regarding the team’s functioning if desired.

Outcomes
1. Team reflection on the program.
2. Support on follow up steps and discussion of progress to sustain engagement.
3. Introduction of new learning content.

TEAM

Coaching Tools

Leaders today need to learn how to transform their organizations from “top-down” hierarchical structures into “flatter” agile organizations, or risk extinction. Realizing this transformation requires a shift from focusing on developing “heroic” individual leaders to teams. In other words, coaches need to know how to coach leaders in developing strong teams. The best-researched and validated instrument available today to diagnose the effectiveness of a team is the Team Diagnostic Survey (TDS). The TDS, created by Harvard professors Richard Hackman and Ruth Wageman, identifies six factors that account for 80% of the variance in team performance. It is important for external and internal coaches to be familiar with these six factors, so that they can coach and advise executives on why their teams are not achieving the results they seek. Without this information, coaches and leaders may be seduced into discussing group dynamics and personality conflicts, rather than focusing on what may be a “structural” problem with the way the team is designed.

C Global consultants have been trained personally by Dr. Ruth Wageman in the TDS, and can coach teams using the six factors. They also have been trained in other team coaching methodologies such as Team Advantage, which is detailed below.

Team Advantage Methodology

EXAMPLE

A major division in a large organization embarked on an ambitious journey to explore realignment using an “Agile” team coaching methodology. Four meetings over the course of nine weeks were split up into three “sprints”. Each sprint involved identification of strategic drivers and tasks for the team. At the end of every sprint the team reported out the “points” they achieved, and engaged in a retrospective conversation to enhance their capacity to perform even better during the following sprint. As a result, the team achieved progressively higher scores during every sprint. They also maintained high team morale despite the tremendously sensitive challenge they were facing. By the end of the process a comprehensive recommendations report was authored based on 30+ interviews conducted by the team. The Chief Information Officer stated the results “Vastly exceeded his expectations.

Research has shown that employees learn best through doing and while having fun. We deploy a “game method” that leverages the principles of sport and action learning—known to yield significant results while improving the way teams work. Two coaches guide a team (between 5 to 15 people) to achieve an extraordinary goal that can be directly tied to a key business objective. The time frame is 16 weeks. A launch sequence of two three-hour events will orient the team to the “game” and help the participants develop a “playbook.” Individual coaching will occur with the team leader throughout the engagement, and 12 weekly 60-minute coaching calls (virtual or telephone) ensure accountability and progress on the ‘playbook’ as well as to continue the team’s learning. The project ends with a team celebration of individual and collective accomplishments.

A strength of Team Advantage is its impact on employee engagement. Employees learn and have fun while delivering a concrete, meaningful achievement to the organization. Teams are often transformed by the experience and can later use what they learned to replicate the process on their own. In other words, an important outcome of this program is that it builds the capacity of managers to coach their own team towards high performance and also for teams to have a shared approach to teaming.